"Your own mother is dead, is she not?"
"Yes. If she had lived she would have loved me, wouldn't she?—just like you love Agnes?"
"Just like that."
Melina sighed. "I wish she had not died," she said, with trembling lips and a sudden rush of tears to her eyes.
"You must not wish that, my dear. God took her, and all He does is for the best; you will, I hope, realise that some day. Now good-bye. Agnes and the boys will go part way home with you—they will like the walk."
Mrs. Brown kissed her little visitor again, and this time the caress was returned.
"Good-bye," Melina whispered, in a voice which was tremulous with deep feeling; "oh, you don't know how much I shall look forward to coming again!"
[CHAPTER VII]
LOCKED IN
ONE afternoon, a week or so after Melina's visit to Gladstone Street, on returning from school at half-past four o'clock the little girl was met at the front door of the cottage by her grandmother and pulled roughly into the kitchen.